Boswell Sisters – Wikipedia

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Boswell Sisters It was an American female vocal trio originally from Louisiana, active in the 1930s. The sisters Martha (9 June 1905 – 2 July 1958), Constance called “Connee” (then Connie, 3 December 1907 – 11 October 1976) and Helvetia “Vet” Boswell (20 May 1911 – 12 November, 1988) were part of this.

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They are remembered for their elaborate vocal harmonies and for the rhythmic experimentation they carried on. They had notoriety essentially in the United States. Their style was resumed in the following years by Different Girl Group, including the trio lek and, in much more recent times, by the Italian Sisters Marinetti.

In 1998 they were inscribed in the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. Ten years later they were then included in the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

Connee Boswell (1941)

The Boswell Sisters grew in a family of the Middle-Class inhabitant in Camp Street, in the uptown New Orleans (Louisiana). Martha and Connie were born in Kansas City (Missouri), Helvetia in Birmingham (Alabama). They began to be known in New Orleans when they were still little more than teenagers. In those years they took part in shows in local theaters and radio stations.

Their first album engraved it for the record company Victor Talking Machine Company in 1925. They did not achieve the successful success on a national scale and had to wait five years to get to notoriety after moving to New York. Here they could work for national radio networks and record discs for Okeh Records and Bruswick Records (for the latter record company from 1931 to 1935).

Many of their record engravings for Bruswick Records are considered milestones in the context of the vocal recording of jazz music. In particular, the re -elaboration that Boswell connected to melodies and rhythms of popular songs helped to make them appreciate from a vast audience.

Musical talents

The Boswell Sisters were real musical talents, with qualities that went beyond the ability to vocalize sometimes even complicated harmonies. They were all three multi -instrumentalists: Martha played the piano; Helvetia (“vet”) the violin, banjo and guitar while connecting was cello, saxophone and guitar player.

Much of their success was also due to the arrangement of Glenn Miller and the orchestration of young artists but already of the Vaglia of the New York jazz environment such as The Dorsey Brothers, Benny Goodman, Bunny Berigan, Fulton McGrath, Joe Venuti, Arthur Schutt, Eddie Lang, Joe Tarto, Manny Klein, Dick McDongh and Carl Kress).

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All these artists contributed to making those recordings precious as few others in terms of sounds (with surprising results especially if the era in which they were obtained) are taken into consideration).

The Boswell were among the few artists of the time willing to rearrange their pieces in a key that was more modern. Although the tendency of the time was rather conservative and pushed the record companies, under the pressure of the wishes of the public, to remain on a traditional defense plane, in the case of the three Boswell sisters there was more availability to that the melodies were rearranged with Even substantial changes, such as performing the score a tone under the original, as well as the key to the song could be brought from greater to minor while a similar operation was implemented on the rhythmic section.

One of the three sisters, connected, recorded several discs alone, for the Brunswick label and, then, for Decca Records. As a solo singer he chose to change his name from Connie, considering him more comfortable and immediate to sign autographs. It should be noted that he sang sitting in a wheelchair or, in any case, from sitting position, due to an infirmity that had derived from an accident that happened when he was still a child (according to some sources, the infirmity was due instead to the posthums of a form of polomielite from which it would have been affected). Among other things, the infirmity prevented her from going abroad to play in the shows organized for the US armed forces engaged on the different fronts of the Second World War.

A primacy is attributed to the Boswell Sisters: that of having used the term Rock and Roll first (the musical genre and the dance would only have arrived several years later). The phrase is mentioned in one of their songs from 1934 by the same title Rock and Roll , in fact, and refers to rolling rocking rhythm of the sea , the sound of the sea and the waves that break on the shoreline.

Overall, the greatest successes of the Boswell Sisters were twenty during the 1930s, including the main – The Object of My Affection – engraved in 1935. The following year, the trio was written by Decca Records but the contract was terminated after the engraving of only three discs (the last one on February 12 of that year).

Boswell Sisters It is also the title of a short film film distributed in the USA in 1933 when the Boswell sisters started the career. The three singers were the protagonists of the proto-video clip directed by the film director Monte Brice.

The script was signed by Arthur L. Jarrett (responsible for adaptation) and by William Rowland (actual author of the script ).

The film – produced by Universal Pictures – lasted twenty minutes and was shot in black and white. The sound audio was in monophony while the aspect ratio it was equal to 1.37: 1 [first] .

The Andrews Sisters began their career as a group imitator of the Boswell sisters and the same Fitzgerald as a young man loved this vocal group very much, appreciating in particular the singing skills of Connee, from whom he changed a lot to characterize his singing style. Contemporary groups that have been inspired by the Boswell Sisters are The Ditty Bops, The Pfister Sisters, Stolen Sweets and Boswellmania, in addition to the aforementioned Italians Marinetti. All these vocal groups continue in the work of re -enactment of the Boswell Sisters recordings.

In 2001 a staged was set musical entitled The Boswell Sisters , based on the lives of the three singers. Produced by the Old Globe Theater of San Diego (California), the musical He was played by Michelle Duffy, Elizabeth Ward Land and Amy Pietz. The production was the same as that of Forever Plaid . The show was well welcomed by public and critics even without being able to land at Broadway.

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